Cremation, Caste, and Cosmogony in Karmic Traditions.

the dead, (they shall eat) their food from broken dishes,
black iron (shall be) their ornaments, and they must
always wander from place to place” (Manu X, 51-52).
Regarding funerals, Manu says “Let him carry out the
dead Sudra by the southern gate of the town, but (the
corpses of) twice-born men, as it is proper, by the
western, northern or eastern (gates)” (Manu V, 92).
Different castes ought to be cremated in different places,
and “for a king, on the throne of magnanimity,
immediate purification is prescribed, and the reason for
that is that he is seated (there) for the protection of (his)
subjects” (Manu V, 94). There are some material
patterns illuminating this ideology in Varanasi. The
Manikarnika Ghat is located to the north whereas
Harishchandra Ghat is located to the south. The main
problem when analysing spatial patterning is that people
are arriving and leaving, and the different interactions
interfere with each other. A strict coherence regarding
spatial use and social hierarchies is difficult to find, and
only a new village can map the ideal model (Jaer
1998:109-111). However, parts of the materiality at
Pashupatinath express the cosmic and karmic ideas of
caste and hierarchies of purity and pollution. The
territorial hierarchy found on the ghats along Bagmati
River manifests a particular type of the caste system;
namely the caste system as argued by Hocart.
Hocart’s interpretation of caste
The main core of Hocart’s theory is in essence that all
societies are communities of persons organised for ritual
purposes, and the main aim is to secure and procure life
in its broadest sense. This has to be seen in relation to
the divine king who was both god and human.
Everything in service of him was a ritual service.
Accordingly, the caste system is a distribution system of
rights and duties connected to the royal ritual and the
king’s service (Raglan 1950). The caste system is a
sacrificial organisation where the aristocracy are feudal
lords performing rites for which they need vassals and
serfs because some activities involve pollution, and the
lords cannot become defiled (Hocart 1950:17). Hubert
and Mauss (1964) distinguished between the sacrifier –
those who perform the sacrifice, and the sacrificer – the
ritual specialist sometimes employed to perform the
sacrifice for the sacrifier. 1 The sacrificial basis of the
caste system is religious purity. The worthy and
excellent castes, which are allowed to participate in the
sacrifice, have to be pure. The emphasis in the religious
books focuses on state sacrifices such as the king’s
consecration and the priest’s installation. The main
1 Hocart build parts of his theory on the differences between
sacrifier and sacrificer, but he does not distinguish these ritual
roles by the terminology as developed by Hubert and Mauss. I
will use Hubert and Mauss’ terminology when discussing
Hocart even though he does not use this distinction himself,
and when quoting Hocart, Hubert and Mauss’ terminology is
added in brackets and written in italics.
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object of these sacrifices is immortality in the form of
freedom from death and diseases; it is becoming a god
and ascending to the world of gods. Or in the words of a
sage, “The sacrificer [sacrifier] passes from men to
gods” and “The sacrifice is the other self of the gods;
…therefore the sacrificer [sacrifier] having made the
sacrifice his other self takes his place in this sky, this
heavenly world” (Hocart 1950:18):
Fig. 2.4. Relation between sacrifice and sacrificer.
Sacrifice = gods;
Sacrificer [sacrifier] becomes = sacrifice;
Sacrificer [sacrifier] becomes = gods.
Sacrifice as a means for obtaining immortality and
eternal presence with gods is the main goal and idealised
outcome of the rite. The funeral aims to give the
deceased to the gods whereby he can attain the divine
and eternal sphere by becoming a god. Cremation is an
excellent medium for transformation. Cremations can be
analysed as three different but interdependent processes;
as technological transformations, as social
transformations, and as ritual transformations
(Oestigaard 1999a). Sacrifice is a ritual practice, which
includes funerals, and the dead humans can be seen as
gifts to the gods (Oestigaard 2000b). Thus, funerals and
sacrifices have the same goal; they are indeed the same
processes if defined by the end products, but there are
different actors involved in the rituals with distinctive
tasks and functions. Common for both types of rituals is
the interaction between humans and gods whereby the
gods accept the gift from the ritual performers. The
sacrificial item can in theory be anything, because what
is given is not the god’s wish but the devotee’s own deep
motivation. The god will accept anything from a coconut
to dangerous penance (Obeyesekere 1990:4). In funerals
the main gift is the deceased’s body as an item. A
funeral and the handing over of the body and soul to the
gods can therefore be seen as a sacrifice, and as such a
procreative action which transforms the elements of the
universe into new beings. The dissolution of a dead body
is one such transformation.
In Rig-Veda (X, 90) it is expressed directly that castes
are made from sacrifice. The skeleton of the ancient
caste system is based on four groups of the population:
1) brahman, 2) kshatriya, 3) vaisya, and 4) sudra. This
model is structured around the king, who comes from the
kshatriyas. Later traditions have stressed that the
kshatriya caste is a warrior caste, and the Chhetris are
commonly ranked as second after the Brahmans in the
fourfold caste system. In the earliest prose writing the
kshatriya caste was the royal caste, and only later the
stress was put on the warrior aspect. Therefore, the first
caste was the one that provided the king, and as such the